Thank f**k for that!

Well that's the summer out of the way, such as it was. Wet, cold, and more photos of Carlos Tevez on football sites than we ever cared to see. But mid-August has rolled around again, which means it's time for the footy season to rescue us from the sharp things we had lined up, ready to end it all in a frenzy of blade, flesh and gore. Or maybe that was just me, who knows? What I do know, is that I'm f**king sick of thinking about football all summer, without being able to see any. That's why I stopped writing for a while, a few technical problems meant I couldn't for a week or two, but by and large, I was so depressed without football I couldn't even write about it without missing it even more. But it's back, so screw that - The Late Flag is back, and here to stay.

What you can expect from us this season is so far largely undecided. All we know for certain is that I'll be doing a weekly round up of the winners and losers in the Premiership and in Europe, and Drew will be bringing you more of his "whatever happened to..." articles, if he can find out whatever happened to anybody interesting. He plans to try.

Other than that though, we've no firm plans, we'll just be bringing you our cynical, slightly warped views on the world of football, and mouthing off about anything which p**ses us off. That'll be lots. I Promise. But, as always, we could use your help, so please, please comment on our articles, we'll reply to your comments, and sometimes even steal them to create new posts. We need your contributions to keep us fresh and keep the discussion moving. It's also quite nice to know people are actually reading.

I'm not going to give you a season preview - every f**ker in footyland has provided one of those, if you want to read one, click one of our links to the right of the screen and you can find some there. What I do want to share with you though, are my ideas of which teams will overacheive (compared to public expectation) and which will underachieve.

Overachievers:

Fulham - Some good solid signings, and call me crazy, but I think Kamara and Healy has the makings of a quality strikeforce.

Portsmouth - More quality signings this summer to back up last year's investment. Watch out for Sulley Muntari, a class act of a midfielder.

Sunderland - Not made the huge transfer strides many expected, but Gordon will be a revelation. Chopra will be hungry for goals, but I'm tipping Daryl Murphy to have a breakthrough year, and Carlos Edwards to impress.

Underachievers:

Everton - A quiet summer so far for the Toffees, and in the Premier League, standing still is going backwards. I expect them to be a casualty of increased competition in the top half.

Blackburn - As above.

Bolton - Personally I'd love to see Sammy Lee succeed, but I can't see it. Bolton to collapse without Fat Sam, surprise relegation candidates for me.

Newcastle Stuck In Captain Limbo

Michael “I love England” Owen has came out and revelled that he would love to become the Newcastle United captain, after the previous captain Scott Parker left for the capital in a £7m move to West Ham. (Shame he couldn’t tell us he was going to be staying at Newcastle 4 weeks ago but he sure found the camera to tell us what he wanted.)

According to reports the England lover has stiff competition from a man who has yet to register a competitive game with Newcastle Joey Barton. Despite Barton’s tendency to become absolutely mental he would still be my candidate before Owen. On the other hand I do not think either of these men fully deserves to wear the arm band.

Early reports however have indicated that Steven Taylor is not in the running to claim the captains armband. The London born adopted Geordie moved to Newcastle during the early years of his life where he has and will become a vital part in the transformation at SJP.

Taylor’s character was tested during the U21 European Championships this summer, where he played part of the semi final against Holland with a serious injury that has kept him out of training and will continue to do so for a couple more weeks. His desire to carry on, his will to win and his commitment to playing football for BOTH Newcastle and England is something some Newcastle players could learn from.
Taylor will only get stronger with every season he has under his belt and the interest that has been shown in him in previous years from Chelsea and Liverpool shows how much potential this kid has. To be captain of the team he supports will surely bring out the best in him if he were picked this season, though he still has much work to do to be ranked alongside the likes of Terry, Carragher and Ferdinand he has the character and the ability to knock on the door of Steve McClown for an England call up.

Which One Is Buying The Title?

Let me get one thing straight about Chelsea fans claiming Man Utd are ‘buying the title.’

1. Chelsea spent over £120m in the first season with the Russian tycoon, where Man Utd have only spent £50m so far.

2. Man Utd (unlike Chelsea were) aren’t alone with the big signings as Spurs and Liverpool have broken their own transfer records this season.

3. Man Utd have only signed 3 players where Chelsea signed a full team basically.

4. Man Utd already have the title and everyone said that they can have Carrick for £18m as they will win nothing.

I am not a Manchester United fan AND NEVER HAVE BEEN! The introduction of these quality players is going to make the Premiership even better, especially since top players aren’t only going to Chelsea, there going to other teams in the league. However, this doesn’t mean that Man Utd vs Chelsea is going to be a goal fest, we will still have to put up with them playing negatively against each other and a boring 0-0 draw will be on the cards.

Nando Torresally Worth It?

Don’t worry folks with headlines like this you could be easily fooled into thinking you’re reading an article from The Sun. I assure you we have nothing to do with them, even though you all know its every Liverpool fans favourite newspaper……

Everybody knows that Nando Torres is a class act but is he class enough to warrant a £26m plus transfer deal?

Liverpool need a goal scorer, any football fan would see that but buying a striker who hasn’t hit 20+ league goals ever is a huge risk considering that’s what they need. However, Torres has scored goals at a very deprived team and his international record during World Cup year was 10 goals in 15 games which is more like a £26m rated striker. This could mean that Torres is getting into the positions at Madrid but, his team mates are such twaddle that they cant even hit Fat Frank Lampard with a ball from 5 yards out (I know you think that’s impossible but its true.) With the quality players involved in the Spanish national team this is obviously a factor in scoring more goals. Therefore Torres, given time to settle, could be devastating running onto through-balls from Gerrard, Alonso, and even the crossing abilities of Pennant could be a feature more this season.

Liverpool need 1 or 2 quality players as the foundations there are solid so spending £26m on 4 players is something they really don’t need right now. There’s no doubt that Torres will improve this team and that’s what counts most to a title chasing side. If Torres is unable to score goals just watch how many goals he creates or watch how he drags the defenders away from goal leaving the like of Kuyt to grab more this season.

Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel

It was never going to take long. In fact, I think pretty much everyone is surprised it’s taken as long as it has. But finally, Sven-Goran Eriksson is back in management, and the FA don’t have to pay TWO s***e managers anymore. This hasn’t come out of the blue either, it’s been common knowledge for weeks that Thaksin Shinawatra would be trying to tempt the Swede to the City of Manchester Stadium as soon as he could, so nobody’s really surprised.

I think we should be. I’ve racked my brains, watched re-runs of England games from the last 5 years, studied City’s squad and consulted ouija boards, and I still can’t understand what’s in it for Sven, or for City. First lets look at things from Sven’s point of view.

Why Man City? Surely the only thing going for them is the money Thaksin will be able to pump into the club, giving them a chance of competing in the transfer market. True, they’ll always get fans in, and will sell shirts, but that’s not a manager’s concern. Someone like Sven must have been hoping for a Champions League club, or at least one in the UEFA Cup, hopefully with a couple of star players to build the team around. Not only are City not in Europe, but in Distain and Barton they’ve just lost their two star players, those the team was built around. Sven has nothing to work with at City, excluding Thaksin’s money.

The problem of course, is that the takeover could take weeks to go through yet. By the time Sven gets his hands on any of this cash, plenty of players will have already moved, or be so far down the road in transfer negotiations that City are just too late to make a difference. It’ll be a Martin O’Neill situation, where he gets a rich new owner, but too late to splash the cash this summer.

From City’s point of view – why Sven? Ok, he’s a big name, and he has “contacts” in Europe apparently. But do they really believe that just because a player has heard of Sven, or knows him, he’d suddenly choose City over Villa? Or Newcastle? I certainly don’t think so.

More importantly this is Man City who scored the lowest number of home goals in Premiership history last year, and then sold their top scorer in Joey Barton. And who do they appoint to bring them more goals, more drama, more excitement? None other than the most boring England manager ever. The man who took the best side England has produced since 1966, and imposed such tight shackles and negative tactics on them that they still can’t break free over a year after he’s gone. So just the man to get Vassell, Corradi & co back amongst the goals, eh?

I think not. For Sven, the dream of managing Chelsea, Real Madrid or Man Utd has been replaced by the more mundane reality of the Premiership’s bottom half. For City, the pre-summer dreams of Seville’s ‘winner of everything going’ Juande Ramos, or AZ’s ultra-attacking Loius Van Gaal have been obliterated by a buck toothed sex addict from Sweden. It's almost cute, they remind me of the two kids left when everyone's taken a dancing partner - I think they’re both just happy to have found someone as s**t as they are.

Please Sir, Can I Have More?

Johann Rupert is the man currently being linked to another Premiership takeover with Blackburn. Their fans are being quoted saying that they would love a takeover to boost the clubs finances to match those challenging for the champions league. However, 15 Premiership clubs have been taken over within the past 5 years, giving those clubs extra money to do what? Challenge for the Champions League places of course.

Eventually all Premiership clubs will have been taken over and promised money to spend, which the new owners cough up immediately. But with the likes of Manchester City, Newcastle and West Ham being taken over and the likes of Birmingham and Arsenal in talks with mega rich people, one can only think that even after these new takeovers take place and all the clubs are itching to spend their new found millions, that all the clubs find themselves in exactly the same place as before. Simply because all the other clubs around them have improved their spending power as well. Where a team spending £25m in a season would normally find themselves sitting top of the most spent league, may find themselves lying in 7th or 8th this season due to the fact that there have been so many takeovers and so much money pumped into the game in such little time.

Will we ever see the likes of one team standing above all the rest in terms of complete dominance in the transfer market just like Chelsea? My gut feeling is no we wont, as there are a lot more teams receiving a lot more money and the gap is closing due to every takeover, but we still cant expect 15 teams fighting for European places which is what new owners always try to promise.
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Some New Strips To Look At

Does Shearer think he owns Newcastle?

I see Shearer has been bitching about Bellamy again. What’s up with Big Al these days? First of all he was talking about a new defence for Newcastle, then “Owen will stay because no big club will take a chance on him till he’s proved his fitness” and now he’s hoping Newcastle don’t sign Bellamy back.

I know he’s probably being asked these questions and is just giving answers, rather than just randomly ringing journalists and saying “this is what I think”, but it seems strange that over a year since retiring he still has some sort of say in what’s going on at Newcastle. Who is he to speak for or about Owen? Who is he to dictate transfer policy? And make no mistake, if Allardyce had wanted Bellamy, there’s no way he can sign him now – Shearer’s words will have a huge effect on most fans, and any who would have been inclined to give Bellamy another chance certainly won’t do now.

It’s a bit like the way Vieira keeps talking about Arsenal and Henry even after he’s gone, it’s very strange that someone can be bigger than the club even when he’s not playing for it any more. He’s completely outside of the command structure at the club, so he can say what he wants and not be held to account by anybody, but he should probably shut his mouth and let Allardyce get on with his job. If I was him I wouldn’t be answering questions other than to say “I’m sure Sam will be a great success here at Newcastle, and any decisions that he takes I’ll support, as I think he’s the best man for the job”. Bearing in mind how his words are taken to heart by Newcastle fans I think he has a responsibility to rally support behind Allardyce and not question any potential decisions.

The whingeing tw*t.

BY RICH PRINCE